Kate — Ben Folds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7BUG8LOd8A

I've written before about Ben Folds; once overwhelmingly positively, and once less so. This song, Kate, is less tainted for me, so to speak. It's not as emotionally immature. If we move past the idea that it's a 31-year-old man (well, at the time) singing about having a crush, it spoke directly to me when I listened to it in 2009, nearly twelve years later. Scary to think it's been four years.

I could talk musically about this — it has some funny tricks with counterpoint and meter; a rhythm section with cowbell I really like; fuzzy guitar and sharp high piano; call-and-response; harmonies and dynamics, clever composition and clever arrangement. But I'm afraid on re-listen it doesn't hold up for me — the lyrics seem shallow, in comparison. Perhaps it's because everything I've listened to after (with the exception of Maroon 5, maybe) has been more lyrically complex (look at any of the other songs on this site). But I think Ben Folds knows about this weakness.

One of my favorite albums of all time, without exception, is his fake leak to Way to Normal. The story goes, he decided on a whim to record a fake version of the album with the same track names but different, terrible music and lyrics, and release it for free as a leak of the real thing on torrent sites. His band got together and recorded the album in a few hours — the lyrics are dumb and repetitive and sung with the voice and intentions of a middle-schooler; the music is simple and poppy and dumb. But somehow it all comes together to be satisfying in the way that only pop can be — he screams and simpers and the piano is dumber and poppier than ever, but it's hilarious and poignant and a good reminder of what it's like to be in middle school, where that sort of feeling seemed like all there was.